


send him home to me

by ourdarkspirits



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22057696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourdarkspirits/pseuds/ourdarkspirits
Summary: Five times Napoleon needs help getting out of sticky situations and one time he doesn’t. He’s a very good spy, so it’s getting embarrassing, but it turns out he works better with a team.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo/Gaby Teller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 137
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2019





	send him home to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tallihensia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallihensia/gifts).



I.

“Getting in is easy,” Napoleon assured them, swirling the whiskey in his tumbler. 

Ilya fought down a surge of irritation. Napoleon wasn’t taking this seriously. “It is not getting in that I am worried about, it is getting out.”

Illya looked to Gaby for support but she was pointedly ignoring both of them. She had made her opinion of Waverly’s mission. 

“It won’t be a problem,” Napoleon replied smoothly. “I’ll get in and out and no one will ever know I was there.”

“Like Italy?” Illya needled him. “You are not as good a thief as you think.”

Napoleon gave him a wounded look. With a sigh, Gaby finally joined the conversation. “If Napoleon gets caught the mission would still be successful. He just needs to plant the bug.”  


“Which is easy,” Napoleon added. “I would like to add that getting out without getting caught is the objective.  


Illya gave Gaby a considering look. Then he turned back to Napoleon. “If you get caught, we are not coming in after you.

“I won’t get caught,” Napoleon said casually, but he couldn’t quite hide the hurt in his eyes.  


* * *

“You look ridiculous,” Illya remarked, giving him a disdainful once over. 

“I’m breaking in, not going to a party. I don’t need to be fashionable,” Napoleon reminded him. 

“Yes and your outfit screams burglar. You’ll get caught before you get there.”

“No. The outfit blends. No one will see me. It’s camouflage,” Napoleon explained, as if there was no way Illya would ever understand.

“Please,” Illya said, settling into the familiar argument. “People don’t notice if you’re dressed like you belong there. They notice if you’re dressing like you don’t want to be noticed.”

“I’ll be fine.” 

With those words he stepped out of the hotel room, letting the door fall shut behind him.   


* * *

A few hours later, Napoleon had not returned and Gaby and Illya could not make contact. They shared a look over the little table and stood up. Gaby slipped her hand through Illya’s elbow, the height difference making the gesture awkward, and the pair slipped out of the room.

Napoleon had insisted on going to the airfield looking like a burglar. Gaby and Illya looked like a couple on an evening stroll to watch the planes. No one looked at them twice. Illya bent down to murmur in Gaby’s ear, selling the romantic couple look.

“Do you see the extra guards at the far hangar?” 

“Mm-hm,” Gaby hummed in response. “What’s our cover?”

“I’m an owner showing off my new purchase to my fiancée,” Illya replied.

The pair of them approached the hangar, giving every appearance of a loving couple, from Illya bending periodically to murmur in Gaby’s ear to the way they occasionally bumped into each other. They slipped into the shadows behind the hangar, looking for a back door. 

When they found an unobserved door, Gaby picked the lock and the pair slipped inside. It didn’t take them long to find Napoleon tried to a chair in an office, looking frustrated. Gaby tapped lightly on the glass to draw his attention. She couldn’t fully make out the expression on his face but the way his head tipped back she could imagine him rolling his eyes.

Illya knelt down next to her and picked the lock. Seconds later they were in.

“I had everything under control,” Napoleon said as soon as they closed the door behind them.

“I’m sure you did, Cowboy,” Illya replied drily as he knelt down to cut the ties holding Napoleon in place.

Once free, Napoleon rubbed his wrists and stood up. Illya took off his jacket and handed it to Napoleon.

“You will need this.”

Napoleon lifted an eyebrow and took the jacket. He didn’t put it on.

“It will make you look less like a burglar and more like a tourist,” Illya clarified.

“Fine,” he said, swinging the jacket around his shoulders.

The three of them slipped out the door Gaby and Illya had used earlier and left the airfield looking like a trio of tourists. 

II.

Everything was going just fine. Napoleon had easily avoided all the sensors and alarms, and gotten the disk out of the vault. It had been embarrassingly easy. Then he stepped on a weight sensor and grates descended on every exit from the room. Unless he figured out a way to reset the security, he would be stuck in the room until morning. The security team wouldn’t notice the sensor tripped until then.

With a sigh, he began a perimeter walk of the room. With the security activated, there was no need to worry about tripping anything else. It didn’t take long to learn that there was no way to reset the security from inside the room, so he settled I for a long night of waiting to talk his way out of a bad situation.

He was starting to doze when he heard a grate sliding open.

“Nice going, cowboy.”

He really didn’t need this right now. “I got the disk.”

“And you got trapped.” Gaby’s voice was annoying matter-of-fact.

“I had a plan,” he replied. 

“So did we,” Gaby said. “Now let’s go.”

“You know, if you didn’t think I could do it, you could have gotten the disk yourself.” Napoleon didn’t care that he sounded petulant. This was the second time in as many months that Gaby and Illya had had to come in and rescue him. It was getting embarrassing.

They bypassed all the security sensors on the way out. The turnover went down flawlessly the next day. 

III.

Napoleon resisted the urge to tell Gaby how beautiful she looked. That was a path he didn’t need to go down, not when she and Illya were so obviously together. Besides, he didn’t need anyone tying him down.

“Ready?” he asked, burying Gaby-related distractions deep where they belonged, and offered his arm.

She took his arm and said, “Let’s go.”

Napoleon had absolutely refused to use the gala as an opportunity to break into the house and acquire the documents Waverly needed, but he was overruled. Now he was dressed in a tuxedo with Gaby in evening dress on his arm. They had no way to conceal anything they took from the mansion.

Illya drove them to the gala and Napoleon didn’t miss the way he looked at her as he handed her out of the car. Nor did he miss the way Illya clenched his fist afterward. He thought about reassuring Illya that they would be fine but he didn’t believe it. This felt like a bad idea.  


* * *

An hour later, they were tied to chairs, sitting back to back. They had no idea when their captor would be back, but she had promised pain in their future. Napoleon was not looking forward to it.

“I seem to recall saying this was a bad idea,” Napoleon couldn’t resist saying.

“Well maybe if you didn’t flirt with every pretty woman you met, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Gaby bit back.

“I wasn’t flirting with her when she walked in on us rifling through the desk,” he pointed out.

Napoleon couldn’t see her but he could imagine she’d be crossing her arms if they weren’t tied to a chair. She didn’t say anything. The party was still going on downstairs. Napoleon came up with one bad idea after another. Anyway he looked at it they were very stuck. The chairs were too heavy to shift closer to the desk and the bindings were too tight for him to get enough freedom of movement to get anything. 

In the midst of all his planning, the door creaked open. Napoleon refused to look towards the sound. He had no desire to betray any emotion to his captor. When Gaby breathed Illya’s name he whipped his head around.

“I’ve never been so happy to see you, Peril,” he said, a feeling of relief flooding him. 

Illya gave him a curt nod before untying Gaby. Then he untied Napoleon.

“Are you going to tell me you didn’t need my help?” Illya asked.

“No. We were in trouble,” Napoleon replied. 

“We had everything completely under control,” Gaby interjected. She rubbed blood back into her hands.

“I can see that,” Illya remarked.

“She showed us exactly where the documents are,” Gaby said.

At that, Napoleon strode over to the desk, and opened the middle drawer. He had been about to look for a false bottom when they were discovered. The woman had proved he was on the right track. Now Napoleon opened the secret drawer and removed the documents.

“Let’s go,” Illya said.

The three of them left through the servants’ entrance.

IV.

Illya wasn’t supposed to be there. Napoleon thought he had come to trust his abilities enough to let him do the breaking and entering on his own. And yet, just like in Italy, Illya had shown up at the job site with Russian tools.

“I told you, I prefer to work alone,” Napoleon reminded him.

“I thought you could use the company,” Illya replied stiffly. 

Napoleon frowned at Illya. He almost looked hurt. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought Illya really wasn’t there because he thought Napoleon needed help. 

“Going soft, Peril?” Napoleon asked, unable to keep himself from deflecting.

He had been struggling enough with the realization that he was more than a little attracted to Gaby, he did not want to address whatever he felt about Illya as well. He returned his attention to the security system and hoped Illya would come back with his usual offense that anyone would question his professionalism. 

“Of course not,” Illya remarked, much to Napoleon’s relief.

Later, he will claim that that relief is what made him distracted enough that they got caught.

* * *

“Can I help you gentleman?” The voice was irritatingly French.

They both froze and rose their hands slowly into the air. Napoleon turned to meet Illya’s accusatory glare.

“I told you I prefer to work alone,” Napoleon ground out under his breath as the pair of them turned around. 

They were faced with a group of heavily armed guards. 

“This looks bad,” Napoleon said. No doubt about it, they’d be more likely to escape if they let themselves get taken hostage now. He just hoped Illya would go along with it. “Don’t shoot.”   
  
“Of course we won’t shoot,” the man with the irritatingly French accent said. “I would like to know why the pair of you are breaking into my vault. I won’t find out if you’re both dead.”

He could feel Illya frowning beside him but mercifully he didn’t say anything. A pair of guards rushed forward and took the pair of them into custody and they were escorted to a windowless room. Again, he found himself bound to a chair, this time with Illya behind him. This situation didn’t feel any better than being faced with more guns than he cared to count. At least they weren’t dead.

“This is your plan, Cowboy? Now we are locked up and tied to chairs,” Illya remarked sharply. 

“It’ll be fine,” Napoleon drawled. “Gaby’s still out there.”

“Your plan is to get rescued?” Illya asked, incredulous.

“It’s worked so far.” Napoleon didn’t add that his plans had involved him actually successfully doing the job without needing to be rescued, but having a team meant backup plans in case things went wrong.

“You can’t be serious,” Illya replied.

The door handle jiggled and they froze. After a few more moments the handle turned, and the door swung open.

“How did you get caught?” Gaby asked as she closed the door behind her. “It was supposed to be a simple in and out job.”

“Cowboy tripped an alarm,” Illya remarked.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” Napoleon retorted.

“It’s no excuse,” Illya started.

“Stop, you’re wasting time,” Gaby interrupted.

She unbound them both and they left the room together.

“Wait,” Napoleon said. “I still need to get the plans. I’ll meet you outside.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Illya said.

“I’ll be fine.”

He watched Gaby drag Illya away and crept back down to the safe. He finished breaking in, got the plans and met them outside of the compound.

“I told you I’d be fine,” Napoleon said as he rejoined them. 

V.

He remembered when he had walked into East Berlin and gotten out again without getting captured. Sure things had gotten close when Illya Kuryakin had followed them all the way to the wall, but he hadn’t gotten caught. So this was embarrassing. He was back in East Berlin, despite Waverly’s reservations and Gaby and Illya were on the other side of the wall and he was in a prison cell. 

This was worse than the last few times he had gotten himself into a sticky situation. This was a prison cell, well guarded, maintained by people who really had no problem resorting to torture. And he was an American. The best he could hope for was Illya using his reputation as a KGB agent to get him out. But he really didn’t know what damage had been done to Illya’s reputation since U.N.C.L.E. had been established. Not to mention the Russians had wanted him dead ever since they had stopped Victoria Vinciguerra from deploying a hydrogen bomb.

Then again maybe the Germans didn’t know anything about Illya Kuryakin at all. He could only be so lucky.

His ears perked up at the sound of hurried footsteps and agitated spearheaded. As the voices got closer he began to make out the German. It’s all a little difficult to understand. Everyone is speaking over each other and then he hears a familiar voice. He wondered when Illya got so smooth. His voice had an air of confident authority when so often he had seemed more blustering. The prison officials were scrambling to help him.

They were almost at his cell, when he made out something about Soviets wanting him, and Germany not want to interfere in Russian politics. 

They were right outside his door when the commissioner said, “We didn’t know he was wanted by the KGB.”

“Well, now you do,” Illya replied coldly, “so you will release Mr. Solo into my custody.”

The relief Napoleon felt was staggering. It appeared he would be walking out of an East Berlin prison under his own power. He had never been so happy to see Illya in his life. The guards entered the cell and handcuffed Napoleon. Once secured, Illya took custody of him. He didn’t say anything to him as they left the prison. Didn’t even look at him. 

They were in a Soviet car when Illya spoke. “Let me guess. You had everything under control.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” Napoleon admitted. “I had no idea how I was getting out of there. I thought I was done for.”

“Luckily for you East Berlin hasn’t been briefed on my defection,” Illya remarked.

“And you still look like a KGB agent.”

Illya nodded and was quiet as they drove to an exit point. They abandoned the car and made surprising quick work of leaving East Germany behind. 

They were well into West Germany before Illya spoke again. “That was very stupid.”

“I know.”

“I knew you would be caught,” he continued.

“So did I,” Napoleon agreed.

Illya glanced at him sharply. “You are not arguing with me.”

“You just rescued me from a near death experience. I’m not inclined to argue,” Napoleon said. 

“Gaby is back at the safe house.”

Napoleon nodded and they kept walking. His relief at seeing Gaby at the safe house was almost greater than the relief he had felt hearing Illya’s voice in prison. There was no denying anymore that he was in trouble. 

I.

Gaby was resplendent in her evening gown as she entered the house of an unprosecuted war criminal. Waverly suspected that he was currently involved in a massive arms deal, so the three of them were there to gather enough evidence to stop him.

She walked in on Napoleon’s arm. That night felt different. Illya was there as a prominent art collector, and Napoleon and Gaby were in attendance as a wealthy American couple. For the first time in longer than Napoleon cared to think about, they were working as a group, not individuals. Illya would play the lookout while Napoleon and Gaby played the part of a distracted couple. 

She leaned into him and he bent down to her, already playing the part. His stomach jumped a little at the intimacy of the motion and he silently chastised himself to get a grip.

“Where would you like to start, darling?” she asked. 

He turned his head to murmur into the crook of her neck. “I always like to start in the study.”

He turned and met Illya’s gaze expecting a glower. What he didn’t expect was the thoughtful look on his face. He looked away quickly scanning the rest of the room. A band struck up and Gaby regained his attention.

“I feel like dancing,” she said, taking his hand. “Humor me, darling?”

“Of course,” Napoleon replied, leading her out onto the dance floor. 

“We don’t want to disappear too fast,” she said as he put his hand on her waist. “It might raise suspicions.”

Napoleon nodded in agreement and they danced a few sets, making a show of being oblivious to anyone in the room but each other. When they wandered out of the ballroom and up the stairs no one followed them.

They split the study between them. Napoleon took the cabinets and Gaby took the desk.

“Why doesn’t Illya look like he wants to kill me tonight?” Napoleon asked unable to let go of the question that had been nagging him since he first murmured in Gaby’s ear.

“Hmm?” She didn’t turn her attention from her search.

“I know he’s a jealous man, and I’ve been making romantic overtures to you all night,” Napoleon explained.

“Oh, he’s not jealous of you,” she said flipping through a folder. “Here’s something.” She held it up.

“Why not?” Napoleon asked trying not to be offended.

“Because he’s interested in you. Please pay attention. Have you found anything?” Gaby gave him an exasperated look.

He shook his head. That didn’t make any sense.

“Napoleon,” she ground out.

“Right, yes,” he got himself back on task. He held up a ledger he found right before Gaby turned his world upside down. “This is pretty damning. What do you mean Illya’s interested in me?”

“I am too, if that matters,” Gaby replied, waiting for him to catch on.

“I,” he paused. “Oh. Right.” He used to be smooth. What was he doing?

Gaby smiled at him. “Is that all you have to say?”

He shook his head. This night had not gone at all the way he had expected. “We should go. I think we’ve got enough here for Waverly.”

“I agree,” she said. She took his arm. 

They descended back to the party below, the papers they had collected concealed in their outfits. Gaby looked for Illya, met his eyes and smiled. Shortly after that, he left the party. Napoleon and Gaby left later and they met at their safe house.

“I think it’s best when you don’t work alone,” Illya said, turning towards them as they entered the house.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” Napoleon agreed.

Illya raised an eyebrow.

“I told him,” Gaby said.

“And?”

“And I think I work best with a team,” Napoleon answered.

**Author's Note:**

> Again I am so so sorry about how long this took. I cannot say enough how crazy this year has been for me. But here it is. I hope you like it.


End file.
